Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Recently our Preservation Specialist, Joe Nicoli, wrote a guest post for Baltimore Heritage about the work Direct Dimensions did on the "Two Sisters" historic wooden home in the Baltimore neighborhood of Fells Point. We're delighted to share that post here as well:

Over the winter, Bryan Blundell from Dell Corporation had approached
Direct Dimensions with a project to completely laser scan the Two
Sisters Houses in Fell’s Point. On a sunny afternoon in March, myself
and another technician with Direct Dimensions took our laser scanning
equipment down to Fell’s Point and in just 30 minutes created a
perfectly accurate 3D digital model of the exterior of the property.

The Two Sisters

The Two
Sisters are two of just a handful of remaining wooden houses in
Baltimore’s Fell’s Point. These buildings were donated to the
Preservation Society by the Dashiell-Marine family. The name, The Two
Sisters, recognizes the efforts of the Dashiell sisters, Mary and
Eleanor, to save these and other buildings in Fell’s Point. Since that
time, the Society has worked steadily to develop a plan for the saving
and utilization of these significant architectural examples of early
life in Fell’s Point.

3D scanning
is one of the many modern technologies that can be used to help reveal
some of the secrets and stories that are part of these amazing
structures. The scanning can provide a baseline documentation of
the building’s current state, allowing the planning team to design
necessary structural supports, and to also serve as a 3D, “as-built”
blue print for documenting current conditions and future preservation
efforts.

What is 3D scanning?

Laser scanning is the process of collecting millions of individual
measurements using laser light. Think of a range finder. A laser beam
leaves the scanner on a specific orientation and the time it takes to
reflect off a surface and return to the scanner establishes the
distance. This happens thousands of times per second. By moving the
equipment to various positions and perspectives, an entire site can be
“scanned” in 3D. Once the data is merged, the resulting “point cloud”
can be used to create traditional drawings, 3D models, and virtual
reconstructions & walkthroughs.

So far, Direct Dimensions has only scanned the exterior on Wolfe
Street, and will complete the project with funds provided to The
Preservation Society by an African American Heritage Preservation Program Grant
from the Maryland Historical Trust. This initial scan effort is also
valuable as an archived “3D snapshot”, a record of the state of the
structure in the spring of 2013.